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minicomputers

Raspberry Pi $25 computers ready to go February 20

Finally, a computer that costs less than a filet mignon is almost here. We first reported on the $25 (a "B" model with double the RAM and an Ethernet port runs $35) minicomputer way back in May of last year, and now it's less than two weeks from finishing production.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation's Liz Upton over at the Raspberry Pi site discloses that after some delays, the first production run will be finished in China on February 20 and immediately shipped to the U.K., where it should be available for purchase from the Web site by the end of the month.

Raspberry Pi's creators plan to make 10,000 in the first run, and while they will be available to the public, the foundation is a charitable organization that hopes it can help inspire children worldwide to learn programming. It's currently looking into organizing a "buy one, give one" program that will try to get more of the minicomputers into the hands of underprivileged kids. … Read more

Tom West of 'Soul of a New Machine' dead at 71

Tracy Kidder's 1982 Pulitzer-Prize-winning work of book-length reportage, "The Soul of a New Machine," is perhaps the best narrative of a technology-development project ever written. It's up there with "The Mythical Man Month" and "Showstopper." And the hero of that book was Tom West. The pages open with Tom at the helm of a sailboat in a storm. "In the glow of the running lights, most of the crew looked like refugees, huddled, wearing blank faces. Among them, Tom West appeared as a thin figure under a watch cap, in nearly … Read more

Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, dead at 84

Ken Olsen, co-founder of the defining technology company of a bygone era, Digital Equipment Corporation, has died. He was 84.

A spokeswoman for Gordon College in Massachusetts, where Olsen was a trustee and prominent donor, confirmed Monday evening Twitter reports of his death on Sunday. Olsen's company dominated the minicomputer era of the tech industry from the 1960s through the 1980s with the PDP and VAX series computers, and was a key part of the famed Route 128 technology corridor just outside Boston, along with companies like Data General and Wang.

"Ken Olsen is in the elite club … Read more

A pen that may point to the future

We fully admit to having precious little information about this item, but the photo alone is simply too good to resist. According to a blog called Big Marketing for Small Business, "A revolutionary new miniature computer is being worked on in Japan that comes in the shape of a pen that you can slip in to your pocket." It's especially interesting given that the whole concept of "pen computing" became something of a laughingstock years ago, at least until the PDA stylus came along.

This pen-sized device supposedly projects a virtual keyboard and screen, recogizing … Read more